THE ARROW OF GOLD--A STORY BETWEEN TWO NOTES




FIRST NOTE



The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of
manuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman
only. She seems to have been the writer's childhood's friend.
They had parted as children, or very little more than children.
Years passed. Then something recalled to the woman the companion
of her young days and she wrote to him: "I have been hearing of
you lately. I know where life has brought you. You certainly
selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it always looked
as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always
regarded you as a person that must be given up for lost. But you
have turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my
memory welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the
incidents on the road which has led you to where you are now."

And he answers her: "I believe you are the only one now alive who
remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time,
but I wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did
know I wouldn't dare put pen to paper. But I don't know. I only
remember that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you
even more than with your brothers. But I am like the pigeon that
went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell